WANT to hear the ultimate good news/bad news story for the Yankees?
Alex Rodriguez, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte are all having wonderful seasons, and that has been terrific for the 2007 Yankees.
Now for the down side: Each can be a free agent this offseason and it is not that difficult to make the case that they would rank as the four best players overall on the market. And to complicate matters, Bobby Abreu would be one of the 10 best position players available, Luis Vizcaino would be arguably the best set-up man on the market and now that the Yankees finally have found a backup catcher they like, Jose Molina, he, too, is eligible for free agency.
“It is good news,” Yankees GM Brian Cashman said. “We have good players. We made good decisions. We need our players to have great years every year.”
But it does guarantee that the Yankees are going to pay a big price this offseason, either financially to keep some or all of these players or by having them leave.
“What does it mean going forward? We will find out when we focus on the future, not now,” Cashman said. “I can’t guess. It takes two to tango. We would like to have them all back, and if they want to come back, we hope we find common ground. But those discussions are for another day.”
In part that is because Cashman slammed the door on talks – notably involving A-Rod, Posada and Rivera – in spring. A-Rod has the opportunity to opt out after the season, but Cashman had believed – before a 50-plus homer season anyway – that the three years at $81 million left on the third baseman’s contract was sufficient. As for Posada and Rivera, there was essentially a wait-and-see on how a couple of upper-30s players would persevere.
Well, if this were a gamble, Cashman has lost. A-Rod is having his best season in a Hall-of-Fame career, Posada is having a top-five MVP season and Rivera remains elite. When asked if he felt he had gambled and lost, however, Cashman simply said “no.” When asked to elaborate, he said, “Just because no.”
A feeling does percolate around the Yanks that A-Rod, Posada and Rivera have hard feelings about Cashman’s proclamations. Publicly, the players all have taken the high road and Cashman said that in his private discussions with the players he has felt no animus.
But if A-Rod opts out, Posada and Rivera truly play the free-agent game, and Pettitte invokes his player option to become a free agent, the Yankees face a big-time dilemma. They could decide they are a fantastically rich franchise and want to head into a new stadium in 2009 with as strong a team as possible and just pay top dollar to retain the quartet – and that top dollar could veer over $300 million. But this decision also comes at a time when Cashman has orchestrated a plan to end the Yankees’ penchant of giving older players long, expensive contracts. He wants to avoid diminishing production and roster logjam while restraining runaway payroll.
While the Yankee farm system is doing significantly better, there is no way the organization can plug these types of holes, not with potentially the weakest free-agent class ever looming. And the weakness of that class should only embolden the Yankees’ potential free agents and their representatives to accept no discounts and demand the going rate for the players’ skills.
Posada, for example, may be 36, but he also has nearly a 100-point edge in OPS on any other catcher in the majors. And the underwhelming Michael Barrett probably will head the free-agent catching class. Pettitte has indicated he will either retire or honor the $16 million player option with the Yanks for next season. But if his reps can convince him to play the field, Pettitte probably can get a three-year contract at around $50 million considering the best starter on the market otherwise might be Carlos Silva.
Do the Yanks really want to force Joba Chamberlain to close next year rather than retain Rivera? And how do the Yanks even begin to replace the right-handed-hitting might, third-base acumen and star power of Rodriguez?
It is very possible Pettitte, Posada and Rivera have their hearts in staying Yankees, and any other noise is merely a bluff to raise their salaries. And it is possible A-Rod has really come to love being a Yankee and that Scott Boras really cannot get other teams to pay $30 million-plus on a long-term deal even for A-Rod.
But the Yanks and Cashman already gambled once in spring training. Can they really risk gambling again and losing any member of this group?
Joel Sherman’s e-mail address is joel.sherman@ nypost.com. “Birth of a Dynasty,” his 10-year retrospective examining how the Yankees soared to the 1996 championship, is available in paperback at bookstores and at amazon.com.